Michele Bachmann and Shooting The Messenger

During an interview with Matt Lauer of the Today Show, Michele Bachmann strongly implied that it was possible for a young girl to "suffer from mental retardation" because of taking the HPV injection.  She made the statement in response to this question by Lauer:  "Do you feel he placed the health and safety of young girls in the state of Texas behind, or below, the need for campaign funds?" (at 2:00 mark).  Interestingly enough, it appears that Ms. Bachmann fully intended to get the remarks about retardation into the interview whether or not Lauer asked such a question.


Immediately prior to the question being asked, Ms. Bachmann made some interesting and reasonable claims about Gov. Rick Perry's "probable" crony-capitalism in unilaterally signing an Executive Order mandating the vaccine for young girls.  These were strong statements which, from her point of view, rightfully questioned Perry for not taking the issue through hearings and the legislative process.  Her case was beautifully made but apparently she didn't think it had the necessary punch and decided to add 

"...(Perry) signed a requirement that all innocent twelve year old, or eleven year old, girls in the state of Texas be forced by the government to take an injection of what could be potentially a very dangerous drug, and after the debate last night........."  


Matt Lauer Interview with Michele Bachmann

Given what came next in the interview, is there any doubt what she was going to say to reinforce her statement that the drug was potentially very dangerous?  

Now Ms. Bachmann is trying to distance herself from the statements made during that interview saying:

"All I was doing is relaying what a woman had said," Bachmann told The Associated Press after touring a manufacturer in Waterloo. "I relayed what she said. I wasn't attesting to her accuracy. I wasn't attesting to anything." 

The statement is disingenuous at best and an out and out falsehood at worst.  Ms. Bachmann, you should honestly own up to the gaffe and take responsibility for it.  If you weren't trying to imply that the drug was so dangerous as to perhaps cause mental retardation, then why in the world did you feel the necessity to ensure you got the statement on air?  It was irresponsible.  You need to own that, admit it, and then you can move on.  But to put the blame on an innocent and clearly mis-informed anonymous woman, well, that is really dangerous. 

Michele Bachmann's sphere of influence is a hundred thousand fold greater than that one anonymous woman with her unsupported statements about her daughter.  She knows that and yet she chose to repeat the claim on a major network television show.  Not only chose to repeat it, she made damned sure she got the statement on the air because she wanted the implication out there.  Ms. Bachmann cannot and should not assume that the American public is so stupid as not to understand what she was doing.  We do.  Can you say, SCARE TACTICS?